Epson EH-TW420 LCD Projector - Epson EH-TW420

Summary

Our Score

6/10

Review Price free/subscription

It's worth stating too, for people pretty new to the whole projection game, that the TW420's LCD nature precludes it from the rainbow effect phenomenon found to some extent on all cheap DLP projectors, whereby stripes of pure green, red and blue flit around in your peripheral vision an over particularly bright parts of the image.

I'm going to lay my cards on the table here and say that I personally find DLP's general superiority with black level more persuasive than LCD's lack of rainbow effect. But I also acknowledge that there are definitely people out there who are so unusually susceptible to the rainbow effect that DLP is rendered pretty much a non-starter.

The last thing I should mention in passing is the TW420's audio, for what it's worth. The 7W of provided audio power does at least prove sufficient to reproduce even an action film scene without distortion, but a profound lack of bass leaves the soundstage tinny and unrealistic. Not that the sound was ever going to be big on realism given how far it is from the pictures it's supposed to be accompanying, of course!

Verdict

Although ultimately let down by the classic LCD black level problem, there are certain shots and scenes where the TW420's pictures look really very nice indeed. Which is enough, at the very least, to make me feel excited by what Epson's imminent higher-end projectors might be able to do. Watch this space.